Majority

One fact about the limo game - there's always something unexpected in the wind. The Boss graciously assigned me a small-stretched run a couple of Fridays ago, six passengers for a local night out, pick-up time 23:30. Twenty-three thirty, that's thirty minutes before midnight.

It's not that unusual, the late-night start. The under-thirty crowd is aggressively nocturnal, apparently, and arriving at a bar close to midnight is cool. By necessity that usually means being there for closing, often a messy thing. Most places in our neck of the woods have a 2:00 am close.

So I resigned myself to another back-of-the-clock night working for peanuts. I had an airport run late-afternoon, so I tried to nap for a while before heading off to prep the vehicle.

Although I'm used to this kind of weird working schedule, a small knot of dread accompanies me with late-night gigs. There's no way to avoid the fact of circadian rhythm, which for most people means slowed thinking processes, tardy reaction times and skewed decision-making. It's the reason pilots must have certain periods of rest between duties, and why the accident rate skyrockets for shift workers. In a potential bomb like a fully-laden limousine, mistakes can be fatal, and with lots of drunk passengers, it's easy to go wrong too.

I began the usual routine, around 9:00 pm. Shower and shave, dress, drive to The Boss's warehouse; check out the car, load the ice, inspect for cleanliness; make sure of the address, lock up and head out, allowing plenty of time to get to the customer's place. I'll need caffeination, so there's a mandatory stop for coffee.

All the time, the start time is bugging me. The Boss, of course, imparts no extra information. All I know is an address, a time, and a total of six people. Nothing more.

Oh, and a cell-phone number. Approaching the condo, I call. The woman on the other end tells me the gate code, and that 'he' will be down shortly. Who is 'he'? Where are the others? How come you're not coming? All questions I want to ask, but cannot.

Travis looked eighteen years old, but was polite and chatty. We were to head off to another address to collect five of his friends. About half-way there he moved forward to talk through the divider. Turns out that he was recently back from Iraq, serving with the US Army. Tonight's limo ride was a gift from his mother...because at midnight he would turn twenty-one.

Click. He was planning his first legal drink as soon as possible. Now I understood.

Good guy. He was the perfect client, the best and brightest indeed, a tribute to his unit. His friends, however, could have done with some of the civility that army life apparently imbues.

But that's another story.

Perspective

Duesenberg at what looks like Pebble Beach GC

Adding up all the pluses and minuses of a driving job, it's easy to come up with a negative number. Horrible hours, low pay, idiotic bosses, capricious passengers, dopey cops and crap cars make for pretty big number less than zero.

On the flip side, there's one biggie which will stick with me for the reminder of my days - a better understanding.

I'm not certain what other work puts one as close to a lot of different people in situations where their vulnerabilities are on show. We see people under stress (when travelling) pushed to the limit (in business situations) behaving excruciatingly well (in public group outings) and behaving excruciatingly poorly (on those same public group outings, often on the same night.) Yes, many service industry folks see folks untied, but not in quite the same way as we do.

Partly this is because drivers are both close and invisible. We're robots who drive, and therefore of limited utility when that's all we do. But when the customer needs a resource, we are immediately elevated to equality, and sometimes higher. The alchemy of human emotion can change the way we're viewed in an instant, depending upon the need of the person paying the tab.

What's clear to me is that people are all incredibly flawed. I, of course, am no exception. However, witnessing so many individuals allowing their emotions to rule their outlook gives me understanding that perspective is in short supply. Just as most people driving cars at 80 mph are unable to think more than one lane stripe ahead, so they can't see more than one lane stripe ahead in their lives, whether we're measuring by time or distance.

Distance - that's what a few years of observing people has given me, or more accurately detachment. It's the reason long-time drivers have a zen-calm surrounding them. They KNOW that good replaces bad, which is replaced by good; lean times swap with plenty; and human nature never changes. For that exact reason, you'll rarely see a chauffeur giving in to road-rage. We understand that cutting into a line or ridiculous tail-gating saves precisely .002 seconds on the journey...and that kharma is a more powerful force than even the biggest engine.

Calm and perspective, the most important unknown elements.

Farm-Ins

If you're a captain of enterprise (or work for a captain of enterprise) and end up out of town, chances are you'll need a ride somewhere. Cabs are dirty and unworthy for Highly Paid Important People, so it's up to the livery industry to provide them with luxury chauffeured wheels.

Big business tends to centralization in all things, particularly low-level functions like transport. This means that if you, you HPIP you, arrive in my sleepy Floridian town, chances are you'll be driven around by an operator engaged by way of what's known as a 'farm-in' job.

Let's take the example of someone from the money-management industry who flies in from Boston to deliver a seminar (ahem, sales pitch with lunch) to rich old people. His company's preferred town car provider is Boston Coach, which happens not to have an office nor any cars here. What to do? They call their preferred partner hereabouts and farm the job out to them.

Occasionally, The Boss receives one of these things. He hates them. They always involve use of electronic aids, such horrors as email and the facsimile machine * shudder * as well as never-ending phone calls, and, worst of all, a high proportion of cancellations.

I hate farm-ins too. For a start, we all know that the client is paying way more than the amount we'd charge for the job. Boston Coach will be charging big-city corporate rates; we're a small town, small business operation, with rates commensurate. It kinda bugs knowing that I am the least paid person in the chain, but the one taking all the shit.

Inevitably the customers (who aren't paying out of their own pocket, it should be noted) are arrogant SOBs who take great pains to demonstrate just how much more important they are than a mere driver.

That's all fine, and part of the deal. Despite that, there is a little fun to be had. Oftentimes a representative from the mother ship will call me directly. Sometimes it is as often as three times in the hour prior to the nominated pick-up time. Always the same conversation:

Is this Wombat? Yes.

You're aware you're collecting Ms Codfish at 12:30 pm? Yes.

Where are you? Sitting in the front left-hand seat.

Very funny.

How are you dressed? In a toga.

Interestingly, we seem not to get so many farm-ins thesedays.



Packard Town Car hood ornament from here [link]

Sunny Sunday

You have to count your blessings. After a big, restful night's sleep, it's not so bad waking to the alarm at 6:00 am on a Sunday morning. Really, it's okay.

It was a beautiful morning, the humidity in the "I can handle this" range and I have an airport transfer to do. Shower, shave, put on the white shirt I ironed last night, a once-over with a lint-roller, check in the mirror, and I'm out the door. In a suit.

What I'd rather be doing is heading to the beach for a swim. In my boardies. After that, a lie in the sun, then I'd take coffee. But here I am, driving to The Boss's warehouse to collect a towncar; someone needs a ride to Tampa airport.

An older guy, it turns out, around eighty, needs that ride. A couple of odd details stand out. One, he's not listed as a resident on the intercom system, and the concierge doesn't know him. Two, I know his residential address is not in this downtown high-rise. His real house is in a gated community on a golf course out in the 'burbs.

Five before eight, my people arrive in the lobby from upstairs. The gentleman and a lady, a decades-younger lady. She's in her fifties, over-tanned, over-skinny, not quite certain of how to deal with a towncar chauffeur.

It's not that difficult. When I ask you if you'd like me to take your bag, you accept my offer. I roll your bag to the rear of the car, then I open the door for you. I then attend to the gentleman in the same way. You both sit in the air-conditioned car while I load your bags in the trunk. When that's done, we go.

Simple. Or so you'd think.

Anyway, my over-riding thought is that if you're on your way to Amsterdam (First Class), constantly blowing and popping bubble-gum won't endear you to anyone. That shit should have ended during the Nixon administration.



Olds roadster from here [link]

Customer Appreciation

Snafugirl was right, my Canadian lady's flexibility proved to be very important that day.

When I realized my careless mistake (by reversing the order of an airport transfer, told here) my reaction was to ring a driver mate. I asked him to check on the arrival time of the flight from Toronto, hoping that it was an hour late.

Too much to ask for?

Yep. The flight was early. Drat. At this point I'm on my way to Tampa airport.

Next, I tried the customer's number. For whatever reason, the call didn't work, not even diverting to voicemail. Damn. Nothing for it but to call The Boss.

Remarkably, he didn't launch. The rocket sat on the pad without the motors igniting. I gave him my estimated time of arrival at the airport, and suggested that he might like to call another company with cars closer. Nope. He wanted to salvage the situation.

After a few minutes he called back. The customer was at the airport, and was planning to have coffee while she waited for me. Foot to the floor time.

The Lincoln Towncar is a large automobile with a large engine, but it's not exactly a racer. In a straight line, however, on a nice smooth highway, she can move. Let's just say that I averaged somewhere in the hot-day Fahrenheit numbers that day, breaking my record as a chauffeur for the distance.

I attempted to call the customer with about five minutes to run, and this time she answered. Just the tiniest, almost unnoticeable hint of annoyance came through in her voice. A few minutes later, I spied her curbside and she was in the car and we were on our way. Elapsed time from recognition of mistake: 43 minutes.

Gratitude for her philosophic nature doesn't cover my emotion. Super grateful? She was damned gracious, with that valuable intellectual foothold: people make mistakes.

And after all that, she still insisted on tipping me. Amazing.

How We Roll

The idea is simple. You tell The Boss what time you'd like a pick-up, I arrive ten to fifteen minutes earlier than that time and wait in your driveway. If I'm late or there's a problem, you will receive a phone call; if you don't receive a phone call, you can expect that I'll be waiting at the address provided, at the time stipulated.

Moreover, all the drivers I know are smart people. If we're at your house at 5:05 am for a 5:15 am pickup, we won't ring the doorbell. I have no clue as to how your household's constituted - who sleeps late, who rises early, whether there are children, whether your wife got up at 4:00 am to cook you pancakes.

All of that is unknown to me, so it seems logical to use a fall-back idea, which is that no-one wants their door-bell rung before the sun's up.

That, sir, is how we roll.

Next time, instead of phoning The Boss to complain that your airport ride isn't there, do something more logical. Open your front door, or open your garage door and

SURPRISE

look at the nicely dressed man with the shiny Lincoln waiting for you.



'55 Thunderbird from here [link]

Flat

Most of my working time is spent on airport runs. It's basically taxi work, but pays some bills between the much more lucrative limousine runs. Some drivers, and some companies for that matter, make airports their specialty. That's understandable, because towncar transfers are simple compared to driving groups of drunks around.

If you make airport runs your bread-and-butter, you end up doing a lot of miles for your dollar, which creates its own set of problems. First is the boredom. Imagine driving the same 60 mile route ten or more times a day, seven days a week as a buddy of mine does. I fear he leaves a small piece of his sanity on the side of I-75 every trip.

Another occupational hazard is the inevitability of mechanical problems, and that bane of drivers everywhere; the flat tire. This was my first as a limo driver, and happily enough the story ends up well. I had parked at Tampa airport with ten minutes to spare before my customer's flight's landing time. In reality that gave me ten minutes, plus ten minutes for it to taxi to the gate, plus ten minutes for her to deplane and find her way to baggage claim. Let's call that 25 minutes to be safe.

Of course, we carry only the 'donut' get-you-home spare in the towncars, not a real wheel and tire. Fortunately I was in a well-lit, level spot, so the change went pretty smoothly. Twelve minutes from start to finish, which surprised me. I feel for the folks who get stuck on the side of a busy freeway. That's downright dangerous.

Scuttling downstairs, I washed my hands and stood waiting for my customer. The plan was to be honest and upfront - it was likely to take us twenty minutes longer to get to her house than normal. The donut is limited to 50 mph, somewhat slower than our usual 70 plus. The alternative was to help her into a taxi.

Fortunately, my wonderful customer was completely cool and let it bother her not at all. Being in the car and on the way was good enough for her. She checked her email, ate her sandwich (delayed flight, no food) and we had a nice chat. When we stopped in her driveway she joked that it was the her longest ever trip time...but she was smiling. She even offered me a cash tip, which I refused. Her good humour was more than enough.

The Boss, of course, charged her the full amount. Heaven forfend he take some off for the inconvenience.




Pic from here [link]

Taking Money

Writing about tipping is uncomfortable. The impression I feel people have of limo drivers is that it's all about the tip, that we're grasping individuals motivated only by the palmed bill at the end.

Probably because this is my first job in direct service of people, the gratuity is still something of a mystery to me. Not that I'm not both grateful for, and work in slight expectation of, a gratuity. But the state of mind that works best for me is to do the best job I can for every customer, and be surprised at whatever happens.

There are no hard and fast rules about who tips well, and who doesn't. What I can tell you is that good tippers are both rich and poor, and poor tippers are mostly rich.

Now I've cracked the seal, I think I'll write more about gratuity life.

This is a good guide to tipping your limo driver. [link]




Pic from here [link]

Chauffeur

A kind of omerta binds and separates chauffeurs. On one hand we're all intensely competitive, given the value of each customer. We'd steal each other's business in a moment. On the other hand a grudging understanding creates an unspoken brotherhood.

If you drive you know the deal. You know the late starts, the early finishes, the rotten money, the unpredictable customers, the moronic drivers, the foolish bosses and ridiculous bureaucrats.

With the downside come the benefits. Among them are the pleasure of a nice day and an open road; not being stuck as a cube drone; meeting interesting, famous or plain sweet people; and the satisfaction of making someone's day.

Today was a good day, for which I am grateful.



Pic from here [link]

Drunks

I will not listen to drunk customers.

Drunk customers have no sense of direction.

Logic deserts drunks.

Believing drunks over your own common sense works against you.

Improved memory is not a side-effect of being drunk.






It's been a long weekend.

Pic from here [link]

Speak when you are spoken to.

If I had to train limousine drivers, I would start with what not to do. At the top of that list is not talking too much. In fact, less is almost always best, and the way to remember this is to only speak when spoken to.

Of the many differences between a taxi and a Town Car, the most important is the driver. Whereas taxi drivers can often be unstoppable chatterboxes, regaling their customers with whatever leaks from their brain, the chauffeur should be more circumspect. Pleasant and responsive, for sure, but restrained and calm too.

The way I look at it is that the customer is unlikely to have any interest in me. They probably think they know all about me anyway, or all they need to know. To them, I'm simple to categorize: Wombat's a limo driver. Seems like a good guy. And that's it.

So I try to look at it from their point of view, which is to say how everyone likes to look at the world: through their own biases and interests. When they do talk, I remove myself from the conversation, instead reflecting back to them the point of their comment, or feed on the substance behind the question. Being transparent is my aim.

Once you try it a few times, it's easy. Unless they specifically ask for personal experience, I remove the personal pronoun from my speech. Taxi drivers are all about the "I". Limo drivers are about the "you". We should affirm, or provide information, or ask pithy follow-ups or (with the right person) provide a wry comment.

Basically, it's about creating a comfortable experience where, for the length of the ride, they're the boss, and we're the minion.

Bang, You're Dead. Or not.

Far and away the best part of driving is discovering gratitude. I wouldn't want the life of the captains of industry we drive to and from airports; being a drunk family guy getting kicks from boffing the next-door neighbour's wife is a turn-off; and crazy hyper people for whom everything is a personal insult make me laugh.

Life is not perfect, and the sooner we accommodate that fact, the calmer we'll all be.

Which leads me to Mr Davie. Mr Davie is man who lives hereabouts, a man who retired to Florida when his wife passed away ten years ago. Like many men of his age, his life pretty well fell apart when the mother of his three children succumbed to cancer.

But he carried on, living in a simple old-style condo building, in a ground-floor place with a nice view of an artificial lake.

I met one of his sons first, about a year ago. All the kids (who are grown with children of their own) live in northern states, all separated by hundreds of miles. This son was a copper, a good guy, the sensible beating heart of the country. I drove him to the airport after a visit because his father took ill. Mr Davie recovered. The son and I connected.

Then, about two months ago, the daughter turned up. She arrived one Friday night, and I drove her to her father's place. All the way she texted, talked or emailed, a tribute to the power of 3-G networks. But she was super-pleasant, and took time to explain that she was taking her father back to her state the following Monday after a doctor's appointment, and that the news might not be good.

Assigned the job on Monday, I was trepidatious. But I needn't have worried. Mr Davie (my first actual meeting) was frail, but in good spirits. Maybe it's body language, but I liked him immediately. Although he talked but a little, he clearly knew about business, and life, and knew that life is a funny old journey.

He came back two weeks after that, with his youngest son. While the son fetched the luggage, Mr Davie and I had a good talk. He was in a wheelchair and tired from the journey. But he wanted to go home, to be in his own place.

The Boss hasn't heard since. I hope he never does. I like the idea of Mr Davie happily passing his days looking over the lake.

Mons Venus

Robert is a big man, not particularly tall, but with a substantial gut. It's more than a gut. It looks large enough to sustain life without Robert's internal utilities - blood supply and the like - but for now, it's still Robert's gut.

Midnight on Saturday night and Robert is at his usual place, directing traffic in the car park at Mons Venus. The small area in front and the smaller area to the side of the club are full, so newcomers park at the pizza place next door. I sense some secret arrangement for this, the kind of secret arrangement that surrounds strip clubs everywhere. Beneath the surface there's way more going on than you can see.

I turn up with my group of ten revelers in a stretch limousine. They're drunk: we have just come from the Seminole Hard Rock Casino and Hotel (to give it it's full title.) More accurately, the men are drunk. The women are variously between sobriety and sleep.

As my charges head off to ogle womanflesh, Robert approaches and introduces himself. Yes, we have met before, but I'm not sufficiently regular to merit a piece of his memory. He eyes me up and down, and politely requests a quick removal of my car-park-blocking hunk of metal. It's midnight, you see, peak time at a Tampa strip club, and it's no time for damn limousines to block things up.

Keeping out of the way is part of the driver's art. Robert quickly assesses that I am on his side, and helps make sure I don't scrape the beast while I am backing and filling. I end up in front of the pizza place, close enough to keep my people happy, far enough away to keep Robert happy.

One of my couples comes back to the limo. They don't want to pay the twenty dollar cover. Last time they were here, they say, women entered free. A sign of the times, I think. But he was in a mood, and wanted to play. I didn't tickle his funny bone, so he started with Robert. The man was a happy drunk, and wanted to make body contact. Rubbing elbows, elaborate ghetto handshakes, bear hugs. Everything was fair game. But then he started in a little too rough. I could see Robert's brain working, fighting the instinct to knock this dope to the pavement, overcoming that thought with the logic that he's just another idiot customer wanting to bond with his fellow man.

By wrestling the car-park guy at Mons Venus.

The couple decided they would pay the forty dollars to watch the girls inside, so left Robert and me behind. I watched Robert in the gaps between pages of my book. He had the look of a man who has seen much.

Venezuela

This weekend is awful for anyone flying from the east coast of the US to anywhere else. Snow in the form of blizzards shut airports from Washington DC (Dulles and Reagan National) to Boston Logan. The knock-on effect has been awesome in its scale.

Weather is one thing, but political stuff-ups are another. Planning to collect a customer from Miami International last night, I lobbed in the carpark at 8:30 for his 8:15 pm scheduled arrival. It always take a minimum of thirty minutes to clear immigration and customs at MIA, so I was in good time.

Too good a time, as the monitors now showed the flight from Venezuela arriving at 10:30 pm. Great. Two hours and fifteen minutes late.

My natural instinct is to work forward to get a rough idea of my "get to bed" hour. If he arrives at 10:30, thirty minutes for I and C, fifteen minutes faffing around getting to the car, three and a half hours to his house, get gas, clean interior of limo, return limo, drive home. 04:30. Yet more good news.

My customer was in decent humour, and we chatted about his day.

"Everything is rotten in Venezuela" he said, a native himself and so qualified to talk. "Nobody cares. It's a ruin".

After mulling on that for the drive back, my 4:30 am crawl into bed didn't seem so bad.

Late night chat

At 4:00 am this morning:

Does that include your tip?

No sir, it does not.

So you're telling me it doesn't include the tip?

That's correct, Todd.

I need to tip you then?

Only if you think my service merits it.

Oh. Yes. You're right. Here's fifty bucks. Are we good?

Thank you very much, that's very generous.





I'd like to see the server's reaction to a 3.5% tip next time he sups in a restaurant.

Halcyon Days

A certain kind of customer strides up to me in the airport, hands me his grip and keeps right on without saying a word. I watch him walk towards the baggage belt, stop, pull out his cellphone, and begin fiddling. The attitude is pretty clear from the start - their chauffeur is only nominally a person, and more valuable as a combination hatstand, closet, porter, Sherpa, mule and driver.

It can come as a surprise. I'll be standing there holding my welcome-board at the base of the escalators. They make no sign of recognition, no verbal or other greeting as they approach. I will not have met them before, so they recognize me from (obviously) the uniform and their name that I'm holding up. Literally without a word, I have had these strangers dump their overcoat, carry-on, camera, computer bag and purse into my waiting arms, and string a tote over my shoulder. So much for my smile and prepared name-specific welcome.

"Hello Mr Peters, welcome to Florida" gets lost amidst their disgorgement.

The name for that kind of customer is extinct. They're a product of buoyant times, when everyone has a job and every bank is lending. There's a PhD to be had correlating money supply growth with arrogance in limousine customers. I'm sure there's a link. Now that car companies are run by governments and employment's over ten percent, even the most boorish of bulls have had their horns clipped.

Impoliteness like that is rare, in my experience. Most of our customers are a delight, particularly the regulars. They're sweet to the point of being embarrassing, undemanding, and simply easy to deal with. Most of them even remove their own trash from the car when they leave, they're that nice.

Extinct is too strong a word for the man in the airport. {This behaviour is not limited to men, by the way. Women are equally capable of high-handedness. I use 'men' in the general sense.} They're really only lying dormant, waiting for the economic winter to thaw and the first shoots of spring to launch them back into their old habits.

Here's hoping.



Also published here. [link]